Do people actually like all of the overdesigned clutter to the point where it makes them not want to switch sites?
To me, the stripped down clarity on Lemmy is a feature. I remember back in the day when people flocked to Facebook from MySpace, in large part because they were sick of eye gouging customized pages and just wanted a simple, consistent interface. The content, not the buttons to click on it are the draw right?
I also didn’t like Lemmy’s default UI. But even as the early wave of Reddit refugees started trickling in a couple of weeks ago, there have already been custom CSS and custom scripts made to customize Lemmy, like the one I’m using right now:
No comment about the performance though. I think Lemmy just wasn’t ready when the blackouts happened. There just wasn’t enough time to prepare. It’s understandable that their current focus is, well, making sure that things keep running smoothly under increased load. In time, I hope Lemmy gets to optimizing their browser performance.